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Reversible bee-haviour

Studies on DNA methylation “tagging” in bees shows behavioural patterns are reversible for bees and possibly other animals including humans.

The experiment shows bees with identical genetic sequences may have very different roles as nurses or foragers in the hive due to different chemical tag patterns.

By removing the nurses from the hive, a number of foragers took their place as nurses, resulting in changes to their gene tags and thereby demonstrating that epigenetic marks were reversible and connected to the bees’ behaviour.

Read more at John Hopkins University

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